Ok I've been playing the new Tomodachi Life for like three days but that's enough time to keep my head with Thoughts™ 24/7 so...
Starting with: the positive 😄💕👍✨
the graphics are simply charming. From models to animations, everything brings me sooo much joy to look at. The og game already had some crazy animations and they've expanded on that front with LTD, while the style is 100x prettier now. So many cool details everywhere too, like I keep finding nice stuff in the different interior designs and the urban furniture and it makes me soooo happy to notice all of this. Special shoutout to the water because it looks so good I would swim in it until my whole body was turned into a raisin
customization!!! Seeing all the new and improved customization options is a delight, it makes me want to create random miis just to use all the options. Honestly it's the one part I think doesn't need any improvements, like if they never add more options to it I'd be perfectly happy with it
the other customizations outside the create a mii are fantastic too, love being able to customize miis' nicknames, their expressions, the way they move, what they say and when they say it... Everyone feels so unique outside of looks and that's amazing!!
urban planning hell yeah!!!!!! Biased on this bcs I've fallen in love with the building system and it's been the focus of my gameplay so far, but I looooove that we can customize our island. Spending 345456 hours grinding so my miis can, indeed, live the dream (of being on a paradisiac island). Also! huge fan of the fact that you don't have to make everything for a front facing camera (<- animal crossing this is directed at you) AND that it's more like The Sims and not like AC (in the sense that it's not the character placing and moving everything)
The dialogues are really fresh and funny, I've been reading all the text boxes I find because they are all interesting. Honorable mention to the jokes about having road furniture on an island with no cars, those got me
other smaller details like the game keeping the pngs (they are hilarious), the lack of profanity filters, miis being able to interact with urban furniture, being able to choose your miis' clothing and where they should confess (also them not changing heir clothes randomly!!), and many any others!!
Lots of QoL stuff too, like being able to follow your miis, comparing heights in the create a mii, autosave, being able to buy stuff from the gift menu, and others I'm forgetting, but generally I haven't felt like the game was slow or unintuitive or making me go through many obstacles and that's great!!
And now onto: the negative 😤💣👎❌
is it just my miis or do they all fall in love/start dating/get married way too quickly? Like I already have one couple and two marriages (+ 5 or 6 miis falling in love) but it's just day 3 of the game, and I don't think this was the case in the og Tomodachi? I know you can make them interact so it's easier to build a relationship than in previous games, but starting a relationship after one day of knowing each other is insane in a bad way.
And related to this, there doesn't seem to be much variation in relationship types, just strangers, friends, couples and I suppose enemies (<- haven't got that one yet). I hope I'm wrong but if that's just it, I'm gonna be disappointed, I was hoping for some crazy relationship dynamics.
While the customization options for miis are close to a 10/10, everything else is kind of lacking. It seems that most of the objects you can gift to miis have the same "one fit for all" type of interactions (like TV shows, music and games have their own unique animations, but the objects in the misc category don't), and there aren't that many items either? The urban furniture is better but I'm still worried that I might get bored by it really quickly since there's not a lot of variation to rotate between aesthetics, and this brings me to the next point of:
how much longevity is this game gonna have? Relationships seem to evolve too quickly and there isn't much variety of it, you can probably unlock most of the stuff in the wishing fountain in a couple of weeks/one or two months of playing daily, there aren't that many customization options for the island, there are no goals or events... Aside from the daily/weekly shop restocks, there aren't many long-term reasons to keep you playing, other than watching your miis, but that means the game has to have some insane variety in interactions to keep you entertained for so long, and I'm not sure that's going to be the case. I know that Tomodachi Life is mostly about watching and not so much about playing, but I worry I might start seeing the same interactions very quickly and get bored by the game. And compared to Animal Crossing New Horizons or Pokopia, the game is missing some features to make it last longer, like long-term goals, customization variety, events, etc.
I've seen people comment that the reason for the few unlockables is that we can design our own stuff but a. it's a lot of effort to make one good design let alone 20 or more if you want to customize your island, b. custom designs tend to not look as good as in-game models, and c. given that you can't share your creations, it means you are on your own so if you hate designing well sucks to be you (and by that I mean sucks to me be bcs I hate designing)
very niche perhaps but no option to sell urban furniture or clothes? Nintendo please I'm begging my menus are getting too cluttered and it's making me chew on the controller I need to clean up space Nintendo PLEASE
That's all for now I think!! There's certainly some stuff I'm missed but that's the most important part methinks. And despite the bad I still love this game a lot and it has brought me a lot of joy these few days, so even if in the end my worries become true, I'll still appreciate it for the smiles it gave me!
And if someone has anything else to add feel free to do so, I'm interested in hearing other people's opinions 💖✨🌺
